Xming Gotchas on patas.ling.washington.edu

Xming is an X server for Windows that provides a useful way to run graphical applications remotely. However, there are a couple of subtle issues that may be confusing to new users.

Boxes instead of text in Emacs - Install the Xming-fonts package.

The shell can't find some commands or Emacs gives "Cannot open load file" errors - Xming's XLaunch utility does not open a login shell by default. Unfortunately, this means the system-wide /etc/profile script does not get run as it normally would. Without the proper PATH settings, some software will be unavailable. To fix this, preface whatever you want to run with bash -l -c in the XLaunch "Start program" dialog. For example, bash -l -c emacs.